The 2013 Mobile World Congress (MWC) officially kicked off in Barcelona this weekend, meaning you should prepare for an onslaught of device announcements and other mobile news over the next few days.
In fact, LG has kicked things off already by dropping a bombshell today. The South Korea-based electronics giant has apparently purchased WebOS from Hewlett Packard, and plans to use it in future products… Read More
Remember the ill-fated Slate, a Hewlett-Packard tablet Steve Ballmer demoed at CES 2010 as a sign of things to come from the PC camp? It failed miserably, leaving HP to linger out there and admit defeat of its webOS/TouchPad strategy.
But as the world’s top computer vendor has witnessed shoppers increasingly picking up iPads and Android tablets, it felt compelled to reboot its mobile strategy by announcing today at Mobile World Congress in Spain, Barcelona a brand new seven-inch tablet for entertainment and media consumption.
It’s called the Slate 7, runs Android and is set to launch this April. And honoring the tradition (the $99 TouchPad fire sale), HP is pricing this thing really aggressively at just $169.99, or nearly half as much as Apple’s $329 iPad mini… Read More
Apple was responsible for one out over every five dollars spent on consumer electronics in the U.S. during 2012, a market research firm announced Tuesday. This while overall consumer electronics sales fell for the second year in a row.
The iPhone and iPad maker also ranked as the third largest U.S. consumer electronics retailer, just behind Best Buy and Walmart. Amazon and Staples rounded out and industry where only smartphones and tablets saw revenue gains last year… Read More
Apple’s iPad mini is doing the job exactly as the company planned: slowing a slipping market share. The 7.9-inch device is working so well one analyst credited it for preventing Apple’s fourth-quarter share of the tablet market falling below 49 percent.
Another, even more striking tidbit: the iPad accounted for one-in-six PCs shipped in the fourth quarter of 2012, per research firm Canalys. And if you counted tablets instead of PCs, demand during the fourth quarter would be up twelve percent to 134 million units. Instead, PC shipments fell by five percent in 2012, emphasizing how tablets such as the iPad could recharge a flagging industry… Read More
Apple Mac holiday sales in the US rose by 5.4 percent, countering the PC industry’s overall 2.1 percent decline. The new numbers by research giant Gartner indicate Apple shipped 2.1 million Macs during the fourth quarter, up from two million for the same period in 2011. Meanwhile, pretty much every other vendor experienced a decline, with Dell reporting an abysmal sixteen percent decline.
Dell’s US market share slid to 19.2 percent, down from 22.5 percent in 2011. All told, Apple now holds a 12.3 percent share of the US PC market, up from 11.4 percent last year, putting the company in the No. 3 spot, right behind Hewlett-Packard and Dell. PC vendors are now seeing US households letting the computers “age out” as they increasingly use tablets like the iPad for common tasks such as e-mail and web surfing… Read More
Remember the days when analysts and Wall Street observers believed the iPad would continue to lead tablet sales for years, and Android competitors still needed work? Funny how time flies. Although Apple isn’t laughing, there is talk Google could overtake Apple in 2013. The problem is the iPad’s lead over a pack of Android alternatives is shrinking to that when the Apple tablet was introduced in 2010.
Also, remember all those non-Android slates from HP and RIM? Yeah, neither does anyone else. That’s the other problem… Read More
Apple’s environmental credentials lost some of their luster in the eyes of watchdog group Greenpeace. The company ranked #6 among consumer electronics firms, a slip in stature largely blamed on lack of transparency. While ranking high in product’s energy efficiency, the gadget maker from California lost points for not providing information on its greenhouse gas emissions that could be externally verified. Apple also received poor marks for not setting a target for lower emissions, the group announced Monday… Read More
Should tablets be considered computers? While experts debate the tech equivalent of how many angels dance on the head of a pin, consumers are voting with their wallets. Tablets sales increased nearly 50 percent during the third quarter while computer purchases are on life support.
Today’s numbers from IDC reflect a continuing trend away from PCs and toward mobile devices. Globally, 27.7 million tablets were sold during the third-quarter. This follows last month’s numbers which showed PC sales declined 8.6 percent to 87.7 million during the same period… Read More
You gotta feel for poor ol’ computer maker Hewlett-Packard. The troubled computer maker is struggling due to slow sales growth, razor thin margins and a serious management crisis that saw the company fire a few CEOs before settling with former eBay exec Meg Whitman. That’s only the tip of the iceberg.
HP’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Palm in 2010 was to breathe new life into the company and provide a lucrative new revenue stream.
It instead turned into an expensive fiasco that cost HP ton of credibility and contributed greatly to a loss of direction. So, what’s HP gonna do? Try the smartphone thing again… Read More
Apple’s iPad is once again ranked as the No. 1 tablet in the United States. However, the company’s lead over Amazon’s Kindle Fire is as razor-thin as its products. According to customer satisfaction researcher JD Power, Apple scored 848 points with Amazon close behind with 842 out of 1,000.
The Cupertino, Calif. firm can be thankful that US consumers found the iPad tops for performance and ease of use — categories heavily weighed in the survey — while Amazon hit it out of the ballpark in price, an area carrying just 16 percent of the final score… Read More
Could HP become the Nokia of PCs? Although the largest PC seller in the US, HP is expected to announce record-breaking quarterly losses later this week. As Nokia never could adapt to a market now dominated by smartphones, HP foresees nearly $9 billion in losses – much from the runaway adoption of Apple’s iPad.
On word that PC sales in the US were down 12.7 percent during the second quarter, HP is expected to loose between $8.5 and $8.9 billion in stock value, according to the Associated Press. Meanwhile, record iPad sales are helping Apple become the world’s most valuable company… Read More
Mashable posted an article yesterday that tells an interesting story about the relationship between Apple and Facebook. Although the two companies are expected to make a joint announcement next Tuesday, things haven’t always been peachy.
This is perhaps most obvious in the noticeable absence of a native Facebook app for Apple’s tablet. Facebook’s iPad app has reportedly been ready for several months, but we’ve yet to see an official release. Before his retirement, Steve Jobs was personally involved in negotiations with Facebook… Read More
When Apple unveiled AirPrint last year, there were only 12 printers that supported the feature. Since then, manufacturers have been dragging their feet on supporting the wireless printing option.
Until now, HP has had the lion’s share of the AirPrint-compatible printer market. But it seems like Epson is looking to get in on the action, as MacRumors reports that the Japanese company has several printers coming out this Fall that support the feature… Read More
In a recent report from The Next Web, it’s unveiled that HP tested webOS on the iPad. Yesterday, HP announced that it would be killing the webOS platform.
HP tested webOS as a web app on the iPad. In HP’s testing, webOS ran up to twice as fast on the iPad than it did on the TouchPad. HP tested webOS on the iPad because it believed that its current hardware was too slow for the webOS platform… Read More
In what some would call a totally insane move, HP has announced that it will be discontinuing its line of webOS devices, most notably the newly-released TouchPad tablet. HP bought Palm and the webOS platform last year for $1.2 billion.
While this doesn’t immediately effect Apple, it is interesting that one more iPhone/iPad competitor has bit the dust. Who will be left standing this time next year? Read More
